While short-term rentals like this one along Beach Boulevard South are legal, many in Gulfport fly under the radar.
Monroe Roark
If you want to rent a house in Gulfport for a week, there seem to be plenty to choose from – far more than what many local residents want to see.
A few hundred short-term rentals are available in the city, many of which are in locations that make that very practice illegal, city officials noted at the April 19 City Council meeting. But policing the matter is easier said than done.
Barbara Miszaros, who, along with her husband, has owned a home in the Stetson neighborhood for 15 years, told the council she is serious about “how to combat the ever-increasing number of non-code-compliant short-term rentals popping up everywhere in our neighborhoods.”
She lives across the avenue from a single-family home that said had several different individuals or groups staying in it over the same number of weeks, in an area not permitted for such use.
The state usurped our ability to change that ordinance by as much as a comma or a semicolon without losing the ability to govern at all…”
“I had a very thought-out plea I was going to bring tonight about how to stop this commerce from damaging the peace of our full-time residents,” she said, waving a piece of paper with her prepared remarks. “But after speaking with a code enforcement officer, I realized that I wasted my time.”
She learned that a number of steps must be taken before any action can be taken, such as taking photos of the various rental activities, recording the dates and times of the activities, and appearing before a magistrate to see it through.
“Gulfport has knowledge of over 200 short-term rentals within the city,” she said, citing a statistic she said she received directly from the city’s lone code enforcement officer. “I don’t know if all of those were in or out of code; maybe that was just to illustrate the enormity of his job. What I do know is that we have had an ordinance on the books concerning short-term rentals for five years if not longer. Why does Gulfport create ordinances that the city can’t or won’t enforce?”
Mayor Samuel Henderson told Mazeros that the ordinance to which she referred requires at least 30 days to qualify as a short-term rental, and that council can do little or nothing to change it.
“The state usurped our ability to change that ordinance by as much as a comma or a semicolon without losing the ability to govern at all, meaning we couldn’t have an ordinance that even addressed short-term rentals if we altered it,” he said. “What that has left us with is just dealing with it on a complaint-driven basis because we can’t change it without losing all control. That was a robbery of home rule.”
Council member April Thanos, who has dealt with this issue directly as a homeowner, said the number of rentals is actually closer to 500, “and probably 90% of them are not in areas that allow it.”
Acknowledging the difficulty in managing the problem using only the current city staff, Thanos noted that other municipalities have contracted with outside companies to do the work for them, and that she would look into that option further.
“I’d really like to see you follow up on that because I’m losing sleep,” said Mazeros.
“I understand,” Thanos replied. “I’ve got one on my block.”
City manager Jim O’Reilly said that about five or six years ago the city considered retaining a company to deal with short-term rentals. “We brought you a budget cost at that time,” he said. “It didn’t move any further.”
He acknowledged that Miszaros was correct about the process, saying that Thanos and her neighbors dealt with an issue on their street.
“They did everything they were supposed to do,” said O’Reilly. “But the way the business model is set up for that situation, they only rent in 30-day increments.”
O’Reilly said the situation contains “a lot of moving parts” and that with the statute in place the city at least has something. But there is a considerable amount of illegality going on.
“These people are not registered because they are not legal,” he said, referring to the owners of the rentals in question. “If they are not in the mixed-use or waterfront redevelopment area, or up off Gulfport Boulevard, they are operating illegally. They aren’t going to come in and get a business license. They do not want to tell us they are doing this.”
That makes it an enforcement issue, he said, and that requires the appropriate resources which the city currently does not have.
“You’ll have to fund that,” he told the council. “I have a very minimal staff and we provide a lot of services.”
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